Revolutionary Messages - (Theatre Makers) by Antonin Artaud (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Published here in its entirety in English, Artaud's Revolutionary Messagescollects Antonin Artaud's political, aesthetic and philosophical writings during his travels to Mexico in 1936.

Written around the same time as his seminal work The Theatre and its Double, it captures a crucial point in Artaud's life shortly before he was admitted to a mental asylum in which he was to spend a significant part of his later life.

Revolutionary Messages contains conferences that Artaud gave at the University of Mexico, articles from the daily Mexican newspaper El Nacional Revolucionarioand a study of three seminal artists of the time influenced by or from Mexico: Franz Hals, Ortiz Monasterio and Maria Izquierdo.

Not only will you gain crucial insight into Artaud's time in Mexico and his vision of a "total revolution," which he places in distinction to Marxist and Surrealist conceptions of revolution, but you will deepen your understanding of the philosophical roots of his theatrical project, which ultimately shaped modern theatre and dance.

The publication includes an introduction by the translator, Joel White, and a preface by Professor of European Philosophy, Howard Caygill.

Review Quotes

The Theater and Its Double is far and away the most important thing that has been written about the theater in the twentieth century. It should be read again and again. Artaud oozed magical desires. He was the metaphysician of the theater.
Jean-Loius Barrault

[Artaud] has had an impact so profound that the course of all recent serious theatre in Western Europe and the Americas can be said to divide into two periods - before Artaud and after Artaud.
Susan Sontag

Artaud remains one of the significant and influential theorists of modern theatre
Gerald Rabkin, Professor of Theatre, Rutgers University

About the Author

Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) was a French dramatist, poet, essayist, actor and theatre director, widely recognized as one of the major figures of twentieth-century theatre and the European avant-garde. Artaud's most significant contribution to drama theory is his "Theatre of Cruelty", the ideas of which have been, and continue to be, the subject of influence for modern theatre and contemporary thought.

Joel White completed a joint European Masters in Contemporary European Philosophy at Kingston University, UK, (CREMP) and Paris VIII (Saint-Denis), France, and holds a PhD in French Philosophy from King's College London, UK. He has published on the work of Artaud in Performance Philosophy, Shakespeare, and Walter Benjamin in Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities. He is current the executive editor of Technophany: Journal of Philosophy and Technology.